


Science Fiction 101

by sinelanguage



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinelanguage/pseuds/sinelanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi expected Erwin to find a competent TA for him to work with; he hadn't expected to actually like said TA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Science Fiction 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imaSami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaSami/gifts).



> Hanji's research is based off of this: http://wombatspasm.tumblr.com/post/59721917705/scientists-said-tuesday-they-have-completed-the
> 
> This is for you, Sami, and by god is this outside my comfort zone.
> 
> edit 1/22/2014; change hanji's pronouns

Levi’s first impression of Hanji wasn’t a good one. When Erwin had asked him to be a TA for his first lecture, a 100-level anatomy course, he’d expected to have a competent TA to work alongside. Instead, he got Hanji.

They came five minutes late to a meeting, toting a messy bun, a t-shirt with a lame print of H.G. Wells’s time machine, and a messenger bag with the Star Trek insignia and filled to the brim with hazardously shoved manilla folders.

Before either Erwin or Hanji could even begin a greeting, Levi turned to Erwin and deadpanned “No.”

Erwin ignored Levi’s protests, instead motioning a slightly confused Hanji to sit down. “Glad you could make it,” he said amicably. Levi snorted and ignored them both.

Despite Levi’s obvious resentment, Hanji’s confusion vanished. Instead, they pulled out the folders from their bag- god, most of them had coffee-stains and pasta sauce on them- and began explaining some lesson plans they’d thought would fully endear the students to anatomy. Erwin would nod along, crossing out a couple of lines on the papers occasionally.

Levi hadn’t spoken a word until Hanji was packing up to leave. As they shoved the folders back into the bag, folding the edges, Levi hissed to Erwin, “Why did you hire someone who looks like they haven’t bathed in weeks and could probably speak full Klingon.”

With that, Hanji turned around and pointed a finger at Levi, “bLHnuch ghuy’ SoH.” Then, with a dramatic turn, they pranced out of the room in victory. They left a trail of papers behind them.

Levi’s expression didn’t change other than slowly raising an eyebrow. Erwin, beside him, just shrugged, “They do know their stuff.”

Levi didn’t respond. He simply packed his bag, buckled it shut, and left, leaving no paper trail behind.

 

* * *

 

Levi had to meet Hanji again later in the week, alone, to discuss meeting schedules and teaching plans. Despite Levi’s efforts to coordinate the whole thing from the safety of his apartment over email, Hanji insisted that they needed to meet in person.

Deciding that Starbucks was probably the best place, Levi had miscalculated the sheer amount of Starbucks in the University area. He thought the one on 45th street would be self-explanatory, but apparently it hadn’t. Hanji had, yet again, been late. And, due to Levi being unwilling to give his cell phone number to just about everyone, Hanji had to scour every Starbucks they found. They entered the building panting obnoxiously, and spotted Levi.

Regretting his decision to meet in a public place, Levi stood in line as Hanji bounced around him, babbling about some research they were doing this quarter. It took far too long to reach the front of the line. When it did, Levi ordered a grande soy milk double-shot latte with practiced precision, and Hanji stared down the menu before deciding on the seasonal coffee with whip.

As Hanji sat down at the seat and started unpacking their bag, still holding onto their drink despite the chance of it spilling. Levi rejoiced in the small moment of silence it brought him, but it didn’t last long as Hanji finished unpacking. Grabbing a binder from his bag, Levi took a much quicker amount of time to find what he needed. He planned on finishing his coffee as quickly as possible and leaving as quickly as possible.

“So,” they started, and Levi fully expected some rant on teaching plans like last time. Instead, they followed with, “What’s your favorite movie?”

Levi blinked. He took a slow drawl at his coffee, then set it down in a precarious location away from either of their papers. “Lesson plans,” he said, “We’re supposed to be discussing lesson plans.”

Hanji shrugged, “You can do that over email.” Levi starred. He had said the exact same thing over email, and yet _here they were_. “Besides! We’re going to be working together a lot with this class, so we might as well get to know each other.”

Levi glared. Hanji remained unaffected, and just sipped at their drink. Figuring his truthful answer might appease them, Levi replied, “Kubrick’s Space Odyssey.”

Hanji slammed their drink down on the table, and whipped cream flew everywhere. Levi could feel the soggy substance dripping down his face, off of his nose, and onto his paper.

“ _No_ ,” Hanji stated. Levi wiped the whipped cream off of his face. “ _That’s impossible_.”

“Did you not get the movie,” Levi retorted. He currently had to focus on this idiotic conversation instead of focusing on how there was fucking whipped cream everywhere. His face. His papers, their papers. His bag.  

Hanji snorted, and leaned back, “It’s not even that! It’s a boring movie- I mean, the pacing is terrible, it’s like twelve hours long and-”

Levi cut them off, “-if you pay attention to the themes-”

“-Themes don’t make a bad movie any better! And they were terrible themes, by the way. Way too pessimistic in terms of scientific exploration.” Hanji crossed their arms.

Levi didn’t bother with wiping more of the cream off his face and belongings. “Technology fought back, man went back to its roots and won. I don’t see the pessimism in that. It’s realistic if anything.”

“ _No_ ,” Hanji said again, just as persistent as before. “You know what everyone thinks of A.I.? They don’t think about Data, or even about that dog thing in Doctor Who- they think about Hal. About how A.I.’s some upcoming evil! That’s all they can get out of it.”

Shrugging, Levi’s expression hadn’t changed at all during their rant. Hanji took it as a will to continue.

“You know the research I was talking about? The mind-to-mind communication thing. The first thing I thought of was Pacific Rim’s Jaegers. Communication between partners, brain-machine interface. That’s the shit right there. But them? No. They thought of the Imperious Curse- something unforgivable. I mean, granted, that’s fantasy and not sci-fi, but they’re still going to let that get in the way of accomplishing something.”

Hanji appeared to be done with their rant now, and took a swig of their coffee.

Levi, despite coming into this wanting to just finish the work, summed up their rant, “You’re angry they’re considering morals.”

Hanji huffed, but luckily didn’t slam their drink on the table. “I’m angry they’re limiting themselves.”

“With morals,” Levi reiterated.

Hanji slammed a fist on the table, “With _pessimism_.”

That lead into a tirade about the optimism of pulp novels and Star Trek, which Levi, oddly, listened to. Every now and then he’d put forth a dissenting quip, and Hanji would have the same passionate reaction lauding scientific optimism.

The rambling ended, however, when Hanji announced that they were already five minutes late for their class. Levi snarked that they needed a watch that wasn’t slow, and Hanji, as they shoved their papers into their bag, replied that he needed to pick a location more obvious than Starbucks when they lived in Seattle.

By that time, Levi’s coffee was long empty, and he still hadn’t cleaned the whipped cream off his papers. Levi sat in the carnage that was meeting with Hanji, and he didn’t mind. His phone buzzed, and he looked the message from Erwin.

_how did the meeting go? ;)_

Levi turned his lip in disdain at his phone.

_it was a meeting about lesson plans, not hooking up, stop with the middle school-esque emoticons._

Levi ignored the fact that they had not discussed lessons plans whatsoever.

Erwin didn’t even bother to write words for his next reply, instead just using the same winking emoticon.

 

* * *

 

When Levi finally returned to his apartment, he was in a mood. Ignoring Petra’s questioning about how the meeting went, Levi headed straight to the linen closet and flung it open. Grabbing Windex and some paper towels, he began to wipe down every window, mirror, and glass-like surface in the apartment with as much force as he could muster.

Most of his roommates stayed away. Auruo had tried to clean the apartment earlier the day but made a mess, so instinctually he thought this mood was his fault. Erd and Gunter had the best plan of leaving the apartment entirely.

“It went that bad?” Petra asked from a distance behind the couch. “You really hate them that much?”

Levi glared into the mirror, and tried to smudge out a dirty spot that didn’t exist. “No,” Levi responded, “I don’t hate them at all.”

 

* * *

 

The first day of section went terribly.

Levi had to control a class of bouncy, nervous, and most importantly, immature freshman. And not immature in the sense that they made dirty jokes; Levi could handle that. He could handle that with _stride_. They were immature in the way that their personalities hadn’t developed past middle-school aged assholery.

One of the kids- Levi couldn’t think of them as young adults, because really- kept trying to ask smart questions that he’d obviously googled. Every now and then, he’d glance to the back of the room to see if a black-haired girl was looking at him. She wasn’t, ever.

Then, there was the angry one with a one-track mind. The only questions he’d ever asked were about bioengineered limbs, which while interesting, were completely out of the league for an Intro to Anatomy course.

Luckily, there was one shining moment at the end of the class where one bald kid in the back of the class made a terrible pun about the digestive system. Levi responded with a deadpanned “Are you shitting me.”

The class didn’t know if they should laugh or not.

Hanji, however, found his joke hilarious and laughed. Both of them had to stay after class for office hours; it was only the first week, so no one came. Most of their time was spent arguing over dumb science fiction movies. The rest of their time was spent arguing about the correct pronunciation of _gif_.

 

* * *

 

The first time they have to grade homework assignments, Levi meets Hanji at their apartment. The whole place was a mess, with coffee cups strewn across the floor and random, roll-around whiteboards hazardously placed around the room in a maze-like pattern.

Levi couldn’t see completely over some of the white boards. There was someone in the back, and he could tell they were blond but that was about it. He noted this with misery, as he would have to succumb to asking Hanji for details.

“Who the hell’s that,” he stated lamely, pointing his chin in the direction of the blond mop of hair. Hanji looked at his eye level, then looked over the whiteboards.

“Oh! Right. Mike, my roommate. He sniffs things.”

Levi sighed, “I’m allergic to pot.” It wasn’t an excuse, sadly enough, as his first college roommate had nearly smoked him out of his own room.

“Naw, not pot. Everything else.” Hanji pushed one of the whiteboards out of the way, so that Levi could actually see Mike. Sure enough, the taller man had introduced himself by fucking smelling Levi.

That was considerably weirder than pot.

The night managed to go just as well as any other meeting they have. Grading papers started out fine, but then Hanji kept giving points for understanding the concepts and Levi kept crossing them out in pen.

Hanji protested. Frequently. Once, they draped themself over Levi in an attempt to reach the paper he was grading.

Awkwardly shifting in his seat, Levi hissed at them, “This is Anatomy 101, not English. The answers are cut and dry. The shits need to know what the fuck a femur is if they expect to go into bioengineering like half of them do. Do you want a bioengineer who can’t tell the difference between a left femur and a right femur? The University couldn’t give a rat’s ass, as long as they get decent marks. I'm there to make sure they actually know it.”

Levi glared down at Hanji, which he noted as strange, and Hanji gleamed up at him, which he noted as stranger. They hadn’t left his lap and he really wanted them to, now.

“Erwin was right! You do care about the student’s scientific education!”

Levi ended up just pushing his chair out and letting Hanji drop to the floor.

 

* * *

 

The next time they met for office hours, Levi asked Hanji to go to the University’s matinee showing of Star Trek: Into Darkness. There’s a hushed silence over the room, as every student realized that, _holy shit_ , Levi was asking Hanji on a date.

The only one who hadn’t realized that was Hanji. Instead, they lifted their arms in the in victory, exclaiming that they knew they would convert Levi eventually. Then, they wrapped their arms around Levi in a hug, and all the students, even the one who asked obviously googled questions, gave him a look of pity.

The date itself went terribly, mostly because Hanji hadn’t realized it was a date. They were surrounded by underclassman, most of whom were making out. It only poured salt in the wound.

Hanji, much to the protests of everyone around them, spent the entire time babbling useless information to Levi, close enough that they could whisper it but far enough away they weren’t touching. They kept pointing out call backs and trivia, so frequently that Levi didn’t even understand what the hell was happening in the movie.

Once, he tried to pull the classic, high-schooler move of the stretch-and-put-his-arm-around-them.  Hanji left to go find more popcorn right as he's mid-putting-arm-around them.

When they leave the theater, Hanji’s babbling on about how great it was to see it again, especially since they got to show it to someone new. They looked at Levi for his opinion.

He shrugged and responded, “Underneath all the lens flare, the _only_ redeeming factor about it was the characters, which weren’t even Abram’s to begin with.”

Hanji looked livid, “ _You take that back_. The actors were perfectly cast-”

“-Khan was _white_.”

Hanji couldn’t retort to that. “If you’re just going to complain, why did you take me to see it in the first place?”

Levi threw his hands in the air, and exclaimed to the masses of undergraduates, “Because you like Star Trek and this was _supposed to be a date_.”

Before they could respond, he spun on his heel and stormed out of the theater. He sent four rapid fire texts to Erwin.

_fuck you they didn’t even think it was a date_

_we fought about a fucking dumbass movie_

_why am I even fond of them_

_god damn you Erwin._

Erwin just sent back the same emoticon as before.

 

* * *

 

When Levi returned to his apartment, the whole entire room cheered. Levi’s facial expression budged slightly, and an eyebrow went up.

“They've been calling the landline _all day_ ,” groaned Perta, who shoved a ringing phone at Levi. The cable’s just long enough to reach the front door. “If you weren’t so finicky about who you gave your cell to this would be so much easier.”

Levi placed the phone to his ear and leaned on the wall. It took a minute for Hanji to blurt out, “Hey, I heard they’re playing Ender’s Game at the cinema. You know, for a date.”

Snorting into the phone, Levi retorted, “That’s a middle-schooler’s power fantasy. Do you honestly expect me to pay money for that?” He then paced around the room, twirling the phone’s cord between his fingers.

“Well- no. Card’s an _ass_ , so I wasn’t going to pay for it anyway- we can sneak in!” Hanji replied excitedly, and Levi could hear their arms moving up and down, mostly because they forgot they were holding a phone.

Levi sighed. God damn them. “There won’t be another date if we get caught.”

 

* * *

 

They got caught. Mall police had spotted them unsuccessfully speeding through the ticket lines, and while Levi had a powerful glare it only got them handcuffed together with the cheap mall handcuffs. There’s a particularly embarrassing moment when they’re both escorted through the mall, and Levi’s positive he saw one of his students cackling wildly with a camera phone.

However, as they sat outside mall security in the cheap mall handcuffs, Hanji managed to lean down and kiss Levi. It was awkward, since they were handcuffed together and were sitting outside of mall security, but it was enough for Levi to retract his threat of there not being another date.

It was not enough, however, to convince him to sneak in with Hanji to another science fiction movie ever again.


End file.
